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1531 |
First manifestation of the Virgin of Guadalupe appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, a district in northernmost Mexico City. |
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1585 |
Sir Walter Raleigh, the famous English explorer, sets out on a voyage to South America in search of El Dorado, the mythic city of gold. |
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1607 |
John Smith is captured by Powhatan in colonial Jamestown, and according to legend, is saved by Pocahontas, daughter of the chief. |
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1623 |
“Woman Who Fell from the Sky,” an Iroquois founding myth, is recorded by French missionary Gabriel Sagard. |
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1682 |
Legend of lithobolia takes root in colonial America when Richard Chamberlin claims to witness stone-throwing devil in New England. |
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1692 |
Outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Salem results in a series of highly publicized trials and eventual execution of twenty accused witches. |
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1707 |
French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac reportedly sees a Nain Rouge, a dwarf goblin, near Fort Ponchartrain du Detroit. |
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1724 |
Charles Johnson’s book General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates magnifies the legends of pirates like Blackbeard and “Calico Jack” Rackham. |
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1735 |
First reports of mythical creatures called snallygasters in western Maryland, according to Alyce T. Weinberg in her book Spirits of Frederick ([1979] 1992). |
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1776 |
Betsy Ross is credited with making the first flag of the United States, based on an unsupported claim made by her grandson William J. Canby in 1870. |
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1786 |
Davy Crockett is born in western North Carolina (now Tennessee) and later would become a folk hero and “king of the wild frontier.” |
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1800 |
Publication of Parson Weems’s Life of Washington creates the myth of a young Washington and the cherry tree. |
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1814 |
The journals of Lewis and Clark are printed and sold throughout the United States. |
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1817 |
The Bell Witch of Adams, Tennessee, begins haunting the Bell family, according to legends written many years later. |
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1819 |
The short story “Rip Van Winkle” is published in a collection of short stories titled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. by Washington Irving. |
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1828 |
Actor Thomas Dartmouth Rice appears onstage in New York dressed in blackface and births the “Jim Crow” trickster figure. |
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1831 |
Frances Silver, heroine of the “Ballad of Frankie Silver,” allegedly murders her husband and is later hanged for the crime. |
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1834 |
LaLaurie House (Louisiana) found burning with tortured slaves inside; legend of haunting by dead slaves’ spirits begins. |
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1836 |
The David Crockett almanacs, a series of publications that depict Crockett performing superhuman feats, begin to appear in Nashville. |
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1841 |
Alexander Young’s Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers fashions the myth of the First Thanksgiving. |
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1844 |
Moll DeGrow, the “Witch of Gully Road” in New Jersey, is found dead in her home after a series of rumored bewitchings. |
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1846 |
The term “folklore” is coined by William Thoms, a literary scholar who wrote about Shakespeare’s use of popular English fables. |
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1847 |
The Donner Party, trapped in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, resort to cannibalism and birth a notorious legend. |
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1853 |
Joaquín Murrieta, celebrated in legend as the Mexican “Robin Hood,” is killed in California after a short career as a bandit. |
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1854 |
George Washington Harris’s first “Sut Lovingood” story appears in print and popularizes the Appalachian bumpkin character in literature. |
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1862 |
Abraham Lincoln entertains his cabinet with humorist Artemus Ward’s High-Handed Outrage at Utica before unveiling his draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. |
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1869 |
Cardiff Giant unearthed in upstate New York; alleged remains of a 10-foot-tall petrified human, is later exposed as an elaborate hoax. |
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1870 |
British army officer William Francis Butler records an encounter with a “windigo” near present-day Kenora in western Ontario. |
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1876 |
Battle of Little Bighorn makes Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse into legends, complicating General George Armstrong Custer’s reputation as a war hero. |
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1877 |
Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph leads a daring, but failed campaign to evade capture by U.S. troops attempting to forcibly evict the Nez Perce from their lands. |
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1880 |
Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings appears in print, introducing American readers to Brer Rabbit and Brer Wolf. |
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1881 |
Kate Shelley becomes a folk hero for alerting a passenger train before it reaches a collapsed bridge on the Des Moines River. |
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1886 |
Observers claim to see a 100-foot sea serpent in the Hudson River, giving birth to the legend of the Hudson River Monster. |
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1896 |
Charles Montgomery Skinner’s Myths and Legends of Our Own Land appears in print. |
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1901 |
Publication of the stories of Zitkala-Ša, which preserves many of the legends and myths of the Sioux for posterity. |
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1903 |
Martha “Calamity Jane” Cannary dies of alcohol-related illness at the age of forty-seven after a career in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show. |
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1904 |
Paul Bunyan, part of an oral tradition among loggers, appears in print for the first time in an editorial in Minnesota’s Duluth News Tribune. |
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1910 |
William T. Cox publishes Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, which gathers stories of mythical creatures told by lumber industry workers. |
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1927 |
Esther Watkins Arnold’s Tooth Fairy: A Three-Act Playlet for Children brings attention to the European tooth fairy tradition. |
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1930 |
Here’s Audacity! American Legendary Heroes by Frank Shay collects tall tales of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, John Henry, and others. |
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1931 |
The magazine Vanity Fair introduces the term “urban legend” into wide usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. |
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1935 |
Zora Neale Hurston publishes Mules and Men, an early compilation of African American stories, folktales, and legends. |
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1938 |
Superman appears in Action Comics #1 and inaugurates a cultural rage for superheroes in American print, television, and movies. |
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1939 |
Fearsome Critters, a book by Henry H. Tryon, entertains readers with stories of mythical creatures like the squonk and the hidebehind. |
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1944 |
Two dozen sightings are reported of the Payette Lake (Idaho) sea monster known as Sharlie. |
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1945 |
Tall tale heroine Annie Christmas appears in a collection of folklore titled Gumbo Ya-Ya by the Louisiana Library Commission. |
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1947 |
Claims of sightings of UFOs at Roswell, New Mexico, trigger widespread investigation and eventual accusations of cover-ups and conspiracies. |
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1950 |
Article in the Miami Herald by Edward Van Winkle Jones first speculates about missing boats and planes in the Bermuda Triangle. |
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1955 |
The Lankfords of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, claim to have been attacked by three-foot-tall men with long arms and claws from a UFO. |
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1967 |
Bigfoot sighting in Bluff Creek, California, produces grainy video evidence in a home movie by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin. |
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1971 |
Famous sighting of Whitey, a legendary river monster the “size of a boxcar,” in the White River in Arkansas. |
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1974 |
Horror writer Stephen King stays at Colorado’s Stanley Hotel, reportedly haunted by the ghost of F. O. Stanley, which inspires his book The Shining. |
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1975 |
The “unsinkable” SS Edmund Fitzgerald disappears in Lake Superior, giving rise to myths about the cause of the sinking. |
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1979 |
Accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania spawns a rich collection of popular nuclear lore. |
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1985 |
The book Serpent and the Rainbow claims that a person who comes into contact with voodoo powder containing tetrodotoxin, drawn from puffer fish, can turn into a zombie. |
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1992 |
“J. O’Donnell” of the Outpatient Chemical Dependency Treatment Service in Connecticut circulates the most famous “Blue Star Acid” warning: urban legends claiming that drug dealers are selling rub-on tattoos laced with LSD to children. |
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1994 |
New owners of the McPike Mansion in Alton, Illinois, report a ghost sighting, creating a sensation among paranormal investigators. |
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1995 |
Villagers in Canovanas, Puerto Rico, allege that a goat vampire called Chupacabra killed their livestock. |
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1998 |
The American film Urban Legend depicts a series of murders, using scenarios described in various popular urban legends. |
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2005 |
First book in the Twilight saga by author Stephenie Meyer creates a popular frenzy for romance-themed vampire and werewolf tales. |
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2009 |
Slender Man, the first mythical monster of the digital age, appears in the Something Awful Internet forums. |
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2014 |
Two twelve-year-old girls in Wisconsin stab another girl to prove their loyalty to the fictitious Slender Man. |